Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/430

402 But, O my God! I was not happy there,

For down below, in dark and caverned air,

Outstretched and cramped, the pallid miners lay.

Their shortened lives, their absence from the day,

Burdened my spirit with a sense of blame.

Now you, and you—I see you flush with shame.

THE WHISPERERS

(NEW YORK, 1905)

the House of State at Albany,—in shadowy corridors and corners,—the whisperers whispered together.

In sumptuous palaces in the great city men talked intently, with mouth to ear.

Year in and year out they whispered, and talked, and no one heard save those who listened close.

Now in the Hall of the City the whisperers again are whispering, the talkers are talking.

They who once conversed so quietly, secretly, with shrugs and winks and finger laid beside nose what has happened to their throats?

For speak they never so low, their voices are as the voices of trumpets; whisper they never so close, their words are like alarm bells rung in the night.

Every whisper is a shout, and the noise of their speech goes forth like thunders.

They cry as from the housetops—their voices resound up and down the streets; they echo from village to village and from city to city.

Over prairies and mountains and across the salt sea their whispers go hissing and shouting.

They say the thing they would not say, and quickly the shameful thing clamors back and forth over the round world;